


is it not living?

by shatteredhourglass



Series: MFD Prompts [3]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Brief suicidal thoughts, Bucky Barnes Feels, Deaf Clint Barton, Gay, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Siren!Clint Barton, Sirens, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 14:12:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19319809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatteredhourglass/pseuds/shatteredhourglass
Summary: The dream he has is strange, of green-blue scales shining under metal fingertips and strong hands tugging him through the water. There’s a voice, too, a hint of an accent he can’t distinguish through the haze, talking to him with what sounds like exasperation. He thought drowning was supposed to be peaceful.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ((The character death warning is for the epilogue in chapter two so if you want to skip that then just consider the end of chapter one the official end. Sorry the pacing's a little off- I was in a hurry lmao

Steve falls.  
  
Steve falls and Bucky falls a second later, a hundred years’ worth of memories tumbling with him, burning hot and searing through his brain. He barely feels it when his body hits the water, can’t quite make his heavy limbs move to escape the depths of the river. His hands are cold, the blood on them being taken away by the currents filtering through his numb fingers. It’s quiet, down here, and he realizes his eyes are closed.  
  
Maybe it’d be better if it just ended like this.  
  
He sinks further down, thinking about people who have died at his hands, the suffering he’s caused because of Hydra. It would be easy, just to let go. No one would have to be scared of him anymore. The Winter Soldier would cease to exist and Bucky Barnes could rest at last. The water is nice, void of sound and touch and pain, empty. He lets the last bubbles of air escape his lungs and feels the world slip a little further away.  
  
The dream he has is strange, of green-blue scales shining under metal fingertips and strong hands tugging him through the water. There’s a voice, too, a hint of an accent he can’t distinguish through the haze, talking to him with what sounds like exasperation. He thought drowning was supposed to be peaceful. _-ce, you _,__ it says to him, indistinct and blurry, and he frowns. He strains his ears, but there’s just a low murmur, nothing he can make out.  
  
He’s pushed out of the river on shaky knees in the dream, a faint undercurrent of music drifting through his head.  
  
 _-get him out of the water _,__ the voice says, sharpening into razor-painful clarity in his brain, and Bucky looks down to see Steve on the surface of the river, face-down.  
  
He obeys the voice without thinking, grabs the straps meant for that infernal shield and drags Steve onto the sand and dirt. The shield’s nowhere to be seen, although he half-expects it to be launched out of the water too. He drops the straps numbly and Steve falls back, unconscious with blood soaking his costume. He hears the muted scream of alarms overhead, wonders what other people hallucinate when they’re dying.  
  
 _For fuck’s sake,_ the voice says. _Just gonna let them shoot ya, huh. Come back here, you idiot. God, Natasha’s going to be so mad at me.  
  
_ He doesn’t dwell on the almost annoyed-sounding muttering, just follows the orders and begins wading back into the water. He’s so _tired_. When it gets up to his knees he trips over a rock, stumbles heavily and feels darkness crowding in on his vision. He barely feels the hands on him, guiding him further into the river, but he sees eyes that are far too blue to be human before the blackness overtakes him.  
  
He wakes up much later, alive, lying on a dock further down the river. The worst of his injuries have been tended to and someone’s wrapped him in a dark red hoodie that’s a little too big on his shoulders. When he sits up there’s no one there, though, so he pulls the hoodie a little tighter around himself and takes a shaky breath in. He’s alive. He’s alive and he’s _Bucky Barnes_ , fuck.  
  
There’s a piece of paper in the pocket of the hoodie. He glances at it and sees the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Dedicated to Captain America, the words in the corner advertise. _Right_ , he thinks.  
  
  
  
Bucky learns.  
  
He learns, and he remembers, and there’s so much shit in his head but he still can’t stop the image of bright scales like gemstones in the water and brighter eyes, dragging him out of the way of the authorities and healing his wounds. Sometimes he’ll dream of the voice while he’s on the run, a low tuneless humming as deft hands pull his dislocated shoulder back into place.  
  
He returns to the Potomac River when the buzz dies down, but there’s nothing there except his reflection, looking a little bereft and lost. There’s a faint desire to just sit there and wait, although he’s already bought tickets to Europe to start hunting down Hydra. Even when he’s decided to do some good in the world, part of him wants to just wade into the water and call for the tuneless humming and bright eyes to resume.  
  
Maybe it’s not normal to be this fixated, but he can’t help it.  
  
He sees a painting hung in a library in Athens, of an ethereal creature with glittering scales and a serene smile speaking with a bearded man. When he questions the librarian he’s informed the woman in the picture is called a mermaid. Bucky looks at the kindness and curiosity in the mermaid’s eyes and the way she looks far too mundane against his fuzzy memories, thinks perhaps he’s found something different.  
  
Then he sees the next picture, of a darker creature calling out to a sailor to drag him into the depths of the ocean, and he thinks.  
  
When he types the word “siren” into the laptop he’d bought he gets recounts of dark creatures made of spines and unearthly singing voices that made the men typing about it wade into the sea and nearly drown. There’s a chat room for it, when he takes a closer look. Bucky makes an account so he can see what they have to say, painfully curious even though he’s aware he can’t stay still for long with Steve on his tail.  
  
  
MythHunter27: _I swear, man. I nearly drowned, it’s a miracle my wife showed up when she did and snapped me out of it._

MythHunter27: _It wasn’t human._

Bob_Faulkner: _Was she beautiful?_

MythHunter27: _Not in the way a normal woman would be. It’s like she was all sharp edges, looking at me like I was a meal._

BlueHairDontCare: _And the singing._

Bob_Faulkner: _Like it was drilling into your brain, right? Didn’t feel real?_

MythHunter27: _It’s hard to believe something like that exists, even when I saw her with my own eyes._

Bob_Faulkner: _You’re lucky to be alive, dude._

**-WSBB Joined The Chat-**

Bob_Faulkner: _Hey, newbie. You seen them too?_

WSBB: _have you ever heard of a siren saving someone from drowning_

BlueHairDontCare: _???_

Bob_Faulkner: _They just drown people. They’re monsters, kid.  
  
  
_ Bucky sits back and wonders why a monster would want to save him, of all people.  
  
  
  
Steve catches up with him in Rome. It’s really more that he lets Steve catch up with him, but he still looks the man in the eye and gives him what he wants. Yes, he remembers, yes, he’s seen the museum exhibit and yes, also that he found his old dog tags and stole them. Steve spends a few minutes staring at the chain looped around Bucky’s neck, the scratches and off-center engraving. Bucky feels fear, for the first time since he started remembering.  
  
His fear was needless, however- Steve hugs him and cries wet tear tracks into Bucky’s hoodie, tells him how much he’s missed him, and Bucky feels a little more settled in this strange, off-center world. They spend a few days in Bucky’s shitty flat, relearning old habits and new, with Sam Wilson lurking in a hotel nearby. Bucky thinks he might be waiting for one of them to snap and fight, but nothing happens. Maybe the triggers are all gone, now.  
  
“Do you remember what happened after you fell? Out the Helicarrier, I mean,” Bucky asks him one morning while he flips an egg.  
  
Steve tilts his head. “No. I was unconscious. You dragged me out of the water, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees, because he did.  
  
Kind of.  
  
If Bucky’s honest, he hadn’t been sure that Steve would want anything to do with him after what had happened, but he’d underestimated the man. Steve hasn’t changed much from the person he remembers, even if sometimes he blinks and sees a skinny five-foot rake of a boy in his place. It doesn’t last forever, though, and soon Steve’s getting emails and calls from Tony Stark asking for his return.  
  
Steve calls him back and starts a long-winded excuse for his disappearance, but Bucky holds up a hand to stop him. It’s not fair that Bucky monopolizes his time when he’s supposed to be saving the world. Steve’s not made for hiding away in a nearly-abandoned building in Rome, he’s meant to be fighting. Doing the right thing. Bucky can’t deny him that.  
  
“Tell him we’re headin’ back to New York,” he says, and watches Steve’s eyes light up.  
  
The private jet contains one Anthony Edward Stark and one Natasha Romanov, who greet Steve and Sam when they walk onto the runway. Bucky hangs back, a little nervous by Stark’s brash attitude and all the hand-waving. Natasha approaches him, hair pulled into a loose braid, and after a moment of eyeing him lifts her shirt up. There’s a scar there, horrifically visible in the spotlights.  
  
“You remember this?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, hears the echo of the shot in his head. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“You harm any of them and you die,” she says flatly, and he nods in acknowledgement. He’s okay with that.  
  
It’s sort of reassuring, really, and Natasha looks like she knows that based on the way she gives him a barely-there smile. He flinches when Stark begins yelling, and she turns around to swat him on the back of the head. The plane ride is uneventful because Tony seats himself in Steve’s lap and immediately falls asleep, and the rest of them aren’t feeling particularly social.  
  
“He doesn’t sleep much without Steve there,” Natasha says, apparently feeling sociable as she hands Bucky a shot glass filled with vodka. “Thank you for returning him.”  
  
They land _on_ the Tower, and it’s much larger than he expected. Thankfully there’s not many people there to trigger his overeager nervous system, and Sam informs him that no one’s allowed to wander the upper floors except for the Avengers, him and Pepper Potts.  
  
He’s introduced to Bruce, who offers him a soft smile that makes him feel warm inside, returns his greeting and agrees to have the pain in his shoulder where the arm’s hooked in looked at- _Tony’s more into engineering, but he can be a bit… much,_ Bruce says, and Bucky has to agree. It’s nice that someone understands, even if he’s a little nervous about how much everyone knows about him. There’s apparently another resident called Thor who isn’t here.  
  
“He comes from another world,” Steve says with a shrug. Bucky’s learned not to question all the weird shit that’s happened to the world in the last hundred years.  
  
“Also, there’s Clint,” Bruce adds. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”  
  
“I don’t really need t… uh.” Bucky trails off in the middle of his sentence when he sees the blond man in his underwear wandering over to the kitchen.  
  
It’s not just that he’s not wearing clothes but also that his underwear consists of very tight, very short boxer briefs in a shade of neon purple. His ass is… impressive, Bucky notes distantly. They all stare at his back collectively as he seemingly ignores them, heading straight for the coffeepot. He reaches up and Bucky sees more scars than he has himself, lacing up and down his body and catching the sunlight.  
  
“ _Clint_ ,” Natasha says, exasperated. She doesn’t receive an answer and Bucky watches as the blond man tips the entire pot up and starts drinking it. Huh. He’s thought about doing that a few times, but he’d been under the impression it wasn’t allowed.  
  
Then he turns around and Bucky feels like his internal organs drop out on the floor.  
  
He __knows__ that face.  
  
Blue eyes hit the light at the right angle and there’s a sharp flicker of blue that’s too blue to be real, an inhuman flicker in their depths.  
  
“Oh, hey,” Clint Barton says, in that painfully familiar voice. He words don’t have any expression in them, but when his eyes land on Bucky his lips curve up in a barely-there smile. “Can’t hear any of you, I don’t have my aids in. Welcome to the shitshow, though.”  
  
He walks past them, the coffeepot still clasped in his hands. Bucky looks at the muscled curves of his legs as he goes and feels a little bit like he’s swallowed his tongue. Or that he’s having a heart attack of some description. Clint seems unperturbed, his footsteps echoing quietly over to the elevator as it dings open obediently. Bucky stays where he is, the shock still winding around his veins.  
  
He’d thought- he’d _remembered_ , and he’d _hoped_ , but he’d never guessed he’d find the siren that saved his life in the goddamn Avengers Tower.  
  
“You want to see your room, Buck?” Steve asks him, and he nods mutely, drives away the urge to chase after Clint and question him. He’s not entirely sure he’ll get answers anyway, and acting weird could cause problems. Obviously his poker face isn’t that bad, because no one questions his reaction.  
  
  
  
When he gets out of bed at two in the morning Clint’s sitting by a window, the moonlight making his hair look luminous. He still looks inhuman- he’s been told now that Hawkeye is supposedly the _human_ Avenger but Bucky has no idea who thought that when Clint looks the way he does. Bucky approaches a little closer and looks in the direction Clint’s watching, but he doesn’t see anything but masses of skyscrapers lower than them.  
  
Instead, he shrugs off the red hoodie and folds it in half before he offers it.  
  
Clint looks down at the well-worn cotton, the little patch Bucky had to sew on the left sleeve, and his smile widens, pleased and a little ominous. “You kept it, huh?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, his throat going dry.  
  
Clint looks back at his face, like he’s searching for something in Bucky’s expression. Bucky’s not schooling his face into neutrality the way he normally does, so he’s not entirely sure what Clint’s seeing there. It must be something reasonably positive, based on the way he gets a smirk back from Clint that makes his face feel hot.  
  
“Keep it for a little while longer,” Clint says. “It’s not my colour.”  
  
He gestures for Bucky to sit down next to him and Bucky settles onto the couch without thinking about it, putting the hoodie back on. It’s a comfortable hoodie, worn in the way he likes clothes to be. Soft. Then he frowns. “Did you…?”  
  
Clint snorts, amused. “Nope, can’t do that out of the water. Sorry to disappoint, you’re just good at following orders, Barnes. Oh, wait, _shit_ , I’m sorry. Bad joke, after- you know.”  
  
“Nah,” Bucky says, and it's a relief that there's someone who acknowledges his past without making him feel guilty. “Of the nine hundred missions Hydra gave me, I only did about twenty without doing something wrong. Ended up strangling a lot of their scientists. Seems like it’s just you.”  
  
“Oh, that _is_ special,” Clint answers, looking delighted. “Poor Steve.”  
  
Clint leans into him, their shoulders brushing closely enough that Bucky can feel the cold radiating from him. It’s not off-putting, oddly enough- it reminds him of the cryochamber, the soothing silence amongst the memories of bloodshed and death. He thinks about tsunamis and storms that no one sees coming, that wipe out entire cities in a raw show of power and destruction, and he thinks about the way Clint Barton smiles at him.  
  
“Do they know?”  
  
“Natasha does,” Clint replies. “She was the one that dumped me in the Potomac.”  
  
There’s a story behind that and Bucky’s curious, but he doesn’t quite have the gall to ask for it in a straightforward manner so he makes a new pot of coffee instead. Clint puts on a movie he insists Bucky has to watch- Bucky’s not sure what’s so exciting about Pirates of the Caribbean, but Clint insists the actors are all hot. He’s finding it hard to concentrate with someone who’s literally been in his dreams for six months without pause.  
  
“Will Turner would look banging with a metal arm. Wouldn’t be able to work it like you, though,” Clint comments somewhere in the middle of the movie.  
  
“Work it? You haven’t even seen me work it yet,” Bucky retorts, quietly reveling in the delighted grin he receives when he wiggles his fingers and the servers whirr. Clint grins at him and taps the fingertips of their index fingers together.  
  
  
  
He doesn’t mean to start a relationship of any kind with Clint- that certainly hadn’t been what was on his mind when he’d made the connection, but he’s started doing it anyway. Apparently this is a common thing, being up at this time of night, because every time he gets up after that Clint’s there, with a bottle of tequila or a story about the Hulk’s latest antics while they were out. Bucky, to his own chagrin, starts looking forward to it.  
  
“Okay, okay, let’s play a game. I ask you a question and you answer it honestly, then you ask me.”  
  
“That’s not a game,” Bucky answers, but Clint gestures for him to go anyway. “Ugh, fine. Why don’t you wear clothes in the Tower?”  
  
“I’m wearing clothes,” Clint argues, gesturing to the purple sweater he’s got on. He’s still just wearing boxers underneath, though, and Bucky gives him an eyeroll. “I just wake up and it’s not worth the effort for pants. Why haven’t you told anyone?”  
  
Ah. Clint wants an excuse to question him. “Not my story to tell,” he says simply. “Is it really okay to drink out the coffeepot like that?”  
  
“It’s not ‘socially acceptable’ or whatever, but that doesn’t stop me,” Clint admits. “You and Natasha ever bang? She told me you had history.”  
  
“...I don’t remember sleeping with her,” he returns. Frowns. “Course, that doesn’t mean I didn’t do it. Probably not? I don’t think so- feel like I’d remember that. Why did you save me? The Widow must’ve told you who I was.”  
  
Clint’s expression changes then, like ink bleeding into a blank page, turning it black and fathomless. Then he blinks and it’s gone, replaced by a lopsided grin. “I mean, at first I was just going to use you to get Steve out of the water. Saving Captain America and all that.” Bucky doesn’t say anything and Clint sighs. “I watched you, when you fell. You didn’t even try. You could’ve gotten away, or come back to finish the job with Steve, or gone on a rampage, and you just… stood there.”  
  
“I was going to die,” Bucky says. He’d _wanted_ to, for a split second.  
  
“I’ve been there,” Clint mutters, but doesn’t elaborate. Bucky wonders again what horrors those eyes have seen. “Doesn’t really fix what you’ve done, though. You deserved a chance to make things right.”  
  
They sit in silence for a minute as Bucky mulls that over. “You knew I’d join the Avengers?”  
  
“I knew you’d do good things if you got the chance,” Clint corrects quietly. “Don’t have to be a superhero for that. Could just be helping an old lady across the street. I wouldn’t wish this job on anyone. You ever kiss a guy?”  
  
It’s a very abrupt change of topic and Bucky blinks at him for a second, baffled. Clint’s just looking at him with the sort of curiosity reserved for children faced with multiple wrapped Christmas presents, so he tries to regain his balance and answer. “No? Have you?”  
  
“ _Oh_ yeah,” Clint says, grinning. Bucky’s face feels hot for some reason.  
  
  
  
He returns to Google again a few days later, tapping in variations of the same search to little results. He’s about to call it quits when Natasha appears behind him silently, her hair brushing his shoulder as she leans in closer to inspect his laptop screen. She smells like vanilla, and Bucky finds himself missing Clint’s salt-ocean-faint-deodorant scent, inexplicably. He doesn’t move when she snorts, softly, and her hand lands on his shoulder, pats at it.  
  
“If you have to ask Google then you probably _are_ attracted to men,” she says. “Just a thought, James.”  
  
He sighs.  
  
  
  
Bucky’s first fight as an official member of the Avengers is against a group of thugs who aren’t even memorable enough to have their names remembered. He kicks one off a building and hopes he hasn’t accidentally killed him, although he doesn’t feel remorseful about it either way. He hears Clint yelling through the comms to catch him and watches with growing horror as he sees the figure on the other building run and _launch_ himself off, arrow notched and ready.  
  
The arrow goes clean through the leader’s arm, pinning him to a wall, and Clint plummets towards the ground. Bucky’s heart gets stuck in his throat and he can only stare as Thor grabs him by the leg a few meters off the ground. A booming chuckle fills the earpiece and Thor tosses Clint up again, far enough in the air he can twist into a flip and shoot another thug before his feet land on the ground. He’s fluid and deadly, even as he runs to yank an arrow out of one’s throat to reuse.  
  
The battle ends and Bucky’s heartbeat is still slamming against his ribs like it can escape.  
  
“You okay, Barnes?”  
  
“Two reckless blond idiots,” he says dismally when Sam lands next to him.  
  
“I’ll take the one in blue if you want the one in purple,” Sam offers. “Think he’s a little too wild for me.”  
  
“They’re as bad as each other,” he grumbles, lines up his sights and shoots a man charging at Natasha. “Steve’s lucky I love him or I would’ve strangled him eighty years ago.”  
  
“What about Clint?”  
  
“Go do your fuckin’ job, Wilson.”  
  
  
  
That night (morning, technically) Clint gets out the vodka and Bucky snatches the whole bottle out of his hands. Clint just watches him with a raised eyebrow as he takes a swig and slumps back on the couch, then shrugs and peels it out of his fingers once he’s done. It’s almost obscene, the line of his throat as he tips the clear bottle up and it’s much, much worse than the burn of the vodka. Clint swallows with a grimace and hands back the bottle, and they start working up a rhythm.  
  
“What’s got your panties in a twist?”  
  
“Nothing,” Bucky says automatically. He _really_ doesn’t want to explain why Clint’s recklessness is something he cares about so much.  
  
He gives the half-empty bottle back to Clint and watches his bandage-wrapped fingers wrap around the neck carefully. Clint goes to tip the bottle to his lips and misses by a few centimeters- Bucky had forgotten that most people don’t have supersoldier resilience when it came to alcohol. The vodka ends up all over Clint’s faded Muse t-shirt and he puts the bottle down to suck on the fabric absently. Huh.  
  
“Do you need to be like- fully _submerged_ , to…?” He waves his hand in a gesture that’s meant to mimic a fishtail but is more of a confusing flap.  
  
Clint lets out a snigger, though, so he isn’t offended. “Yeah, I have to be in a pretty big body of water to change. None of that shit about keeping your half-fish seapeople in bathtubs like they do in those kid movies.”  
  
Bucky reaches for the bottle, takes a swig. Clint’s still trying to get the vodka out of his shirt. It’s oddly endearing. He’s not as drunk as a normal person would be, but he’s loose-lipped enough that his next question slips out without him giving it express permission. “So you were born like this? Or?”  
  
“What is this, twenty questions?” Clint snorts. “No, I was born in Iowa.”  
  
“Did you choose it?”  
  
Bucky looks back and there’s something dark and helpless in Clint’s expression as he takes the bottle back, casts his eyes down at it like it has the answers. “No, I didn’t pick this,” he says, and Bucky thinks about the books he’s read, the blog posts that said sirens were people who’d drowned violently and had been returned by the chaos of the sea. The sea isn’t the only chaos he sees, because the look on Clint’s face is much worse.  
  
The desire to chase that expression off of Clint’s face hits him like a truck and before he thinks about it he’s leaning over to press his lips to Clint’s. It works, because when he draws back Clint’s just staring at him, wide-eyed.  
  
“I’ve kissed a guy now,” he says conspiratorially, somewhere between trying to change the subject and feeling the absolute thrill of delight bubbling up inside him, and Clint laughs and tugs him back to fit their mouths together again.   
  
  
  
They don’t end up retiring to their separate quarters that night, and when they wake up the next morning Clint’s face is pressed against his chest and their legs are tangled together. Natasha rolls her eyes at them when she passes.  
  
Whatever this means, wherever this is going, he’s happy.


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic earns the character death tag.

No one saw the shot coming.  
  
The Avengers are converging on the collapsed supervillain when it happens. Bucky was on the roof, set up with his rifle, and after he sees Tony nudge the woman on the pier to no reaction he drops the gun, swings down the building. Clint’s making some snide comment at the unconscious lady, pissed off because one of his hearing aids got knocked out and crushed during the fight. It’s silly, carefree even with the aftermath of a battle, and all Bucky can think about is getting him home so he can make him a coffee and kiss him silly.  
  
He makes it halfway down the ladder when there’s an ear-splitting bang and a sharp pain shoots through his chest. It’s shocking enough that he lets go of the ladder, falls to someone screaming his name and the dim realization that he’s been shot.  
  
Bucky hits the concrete with a frightening crunch that he can’t quite place, and he can’t breathe properly. He feels the next shot pierce through his body armour, lets out a choking noise and tastes metal and dirt. His visions swims in front of him and suddenly Steve’s there, leaning over him looking pale and frightened. Bucky tries to raise his arm to pat away the worried expression, but his limbs won’t move.  
  
“Buck? _Bucky_ , fuck. Someone call a goddamn medic!”  
  
“Terminator, shit, what the fuck did they hit you with,” he hears Stark say. “Steve, there’s no way he’s going to last long enough to get to a hospital. Look at him. That’s not…”  
  
“He’s got the serum,” Steve says frantically. “We could-”  
  
“He shouldn’t be alive _now_ ,” Tony retorts, although he sounds a little choked up himself. Bucky would laugh at him if he could figure out how to work his vocal cords again. He feels like he’s going to either vomit or go into hysterics. It _hurts_. “Serum or not, he’s already dying, Steve.”  
  
“No,” Steve’s yelling, voice cracking. “He can’t just die like this, we have to-”  
  
“I killed them,” Clint’s voice sounds distant. “What’s going on? Did they hit a civilian?”  
  
“Clint, you don’t want to-”  
  
There’s a stream of curse words and then Steve’s being shoved aside and Clint’s blurry face comes into view. There’s a lot of blood on Clint’s hands when he raises them up into Bucky’s field of vision, staining the purple on his glove. He’s so unbelievably pretty, even when Bucky’s eyes won’t focus on him properly. It’s a nice thing to see for his last few minutes on this planet.  
  
Oh, _fuck_ , he’s dying.  
  
“-don’t want to go,” he manages to croak out, and his voice sounds absolutely shredded.  
  
There’s blood on his lips and he’s in so much pain and he doesn’t want to die, not like this, not without actually telling Clint how he feels. He’s got a million things he needs to do, stupid menial things like learning ASL and giving Steve that CD he’d wanted to share. Important things like fighting Hydra and saving the world with the Avengers, trying to make up for the things he's done. He's got a life now, a proper life with friends and people he loves and he's not ready to let go of it yet. Clint’s lips become a thin line and he looks up at someone else before he leans down.   
  
Bucky’s vaguely aware he’s being picked up and wow, Clint’s stronger than he’d guessed.  
  
“Lucky we’re right next to the fuckin’ water,” Clint mutters amongst the rest of the team’s shouting, alarmed.   
  
Bucky wishes they’d shut up, closes his eyes against the painful jostling and hears the sound of glass crunching under Clint’s boots.  
  
The water rushes around them and it’s so goddamn _cold_. He can only just feel Clint’s arms around him, warm and rough as he tries to hold his breath. He’s vaguely aware they’re underwater but it doesn’t feel real, everything taking on a dreamlike quality the way it had the first time they’d met and he hears the echo of the Helicarrier crashing, the pain slipping away from his fingertips. It’s peaceful, oddly enough, none of the pain and panic he’d felt earlier present. Callused fingers brush his face and he feels lips against his, just for a second, hears strange off-key humming.  
  
Is that a Queen song?  
  
 _Breathe in, baby, come on, it’s okay. I’m here _, I just need you to breathe before you bleed out,__ the voice says, Clint says, and Bucky obeys automatically, filling his lungs with water. He starts choking a second later, but it doesn’t hurt, weirdly enough. _I’m so sorry, Bucky, I’m so sorry.  
  
_ He runs out of oxygen and everything goes black.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When Bucky opens his eyes again everything is still black. He blinks.  
  
 _What the fuck _,__ he says, except he doesn’t actually say it.  
  
It still echoes around him, his own Brooklyn accent mirrored back at him. Oh god, he’s blind in the afterlife. He’d been fairly sure that whatever gods were out there hated his guts, but this just confirms it. He touches one hand to his chest, feels around and finds holes in his body armour. There’s nothing there except for skin, though, no holes in his flesh or blood. Yeah, he’s definitely dead. He'd expected the afterlife to be... more, somehow.   
  
Maybe hell is just an empty, soundless void of echoes. It wouldn't be enjoyable, that's for sure.  
  
 _Buck?  
  
Clint? What’re you doin’ here? Did they make you blind too _,__ he asks, gets a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh from directly in front of him and then the darkness is swiped away. He’s greeted with the sight of Clint, eternally beautiful, eyes nearly luminous as he swats at a piece of seaweed that was stuck to Bucky’s face. Oh. He looks around and sees murky green water, filled with algae and small fish that swirl around his face and give Clint a wide berth. He's half-concerned he's made it upstairs and then he sees an empty plastic bag float past, grimaces and turns his attention back to the siren floating a foot away from him.  
  
He’s never gotten a proper look at Clint like this and he drinks it in, the sense of otherness he exudes just by being underwater. His hair's nearly translucent, and there's a faint hint of gills on his throat where the collar of his suit ends.   
  
He’s a little bit more content with the afterlife if Clint’s here. It could technically be an illusion, he supposes, but illusions probably don't have red-rimmed eyes and little clouds of blood coming off of them.  
  
 _You feel okay?_ Clint ventures, looking uncharacteristically unsure.  
  
 _Does the afterlife normally hurt? No, I’m fine. Pissed off, maybe _,__ he answers, reaches out to Clint and pulls him closer. Clint’s still looking like he’s seen a unicorn in the flesh, wide-eyed and a little frantic as he splays his fingers against Bucky’s cheek. His hand is warm and Bucky presses an amused kiss to the palm. He's allowed to flirt while dead, right?  
  
 _You’re… you’re not dead, Barnes,_ Clint says, moves back like he’s scared. Not of him, though- this is the sort of look Bucky got from Steve when the punk would come home bruised and bloody. Getting in a fight that wasn't his to fight. Like he wasn’t sure what Bucky’s reaction was going to be.  
  
 _It was the only option we had _,__ Clint says helplessly, and Bucky realizes he’s not looking at his face, but further down. He tips his head to see what he’s supposed to be looking at. Red scales fill his vision, gleaming like gemstones in the dim light, speckled with silver like stardust along the fins of the tail waving gently in the water. Oh. That's... not his legs.  
  
 _Oh, shit,_ he says, a little hysterical.  
  
 _If it’s any consolation, you look more... alive than I do _,__ Clint offers. Bucky takes a minute from staring blatantly at his tail (his fucking _tail_ , what the fuck) to stare at Clint. Now he’s clear-headed, he can see the deadly spines along Clint’s deceptively pretty scales, the holes and clear signs of death and destruction visible. Clint's whole body is a battlefield even like this, maps of scars and pain arcing up and down his flesh. He looks back down and sees none of that on his new... appendage. It's... pretty, in an abstract, mildly terrifying sort of way.   
  
 _Less painful drowning _,__ he thinks. He'd been right, then, about how they were made- and he doesn't want to think about what that means for Clint. It hadn't even felt like dying, in the end. It had been peaceful, and Bucky's guessing that was because of the nervously fidgeting sea-creature in front of him.  
  
 _You’re okay?  
  
I’m a fuckin’ mermaid _,__ Bucky says, unable to hold back the laugh. Clint starts laughing as well. _Oh, fuck, Steve’s going to kill us.  
  
I kept you alive, he can’t do shit to me- and you died, he can’t tell you off _,__ Clint retorts, pulls him in for a kiss.  
  
 _God, I think I love you _,__ he thinks.


End file.
